5 Things: Tour Championship

By Staff Created: September 18, 2018

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ST LOUIS, MO - AUGUST 12: Tiger Woods of the United States plays his shot from the 13th tee during the final round of the 2018 PGA Championship at Bellerive Country Club on August 12, 2018 in St Louis, Missouri. (Photo by Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)

This week, at East Lake GC in Atlanta, marks the finale of the PGA Tour’s 2017-18 season, where a nice trophy and more than a million bucks is up for grabs for the Tour Championship winner and a nicer trophy and a $10-millon bonus is on the line for the overall FedEx Cup champion. Nice perks these PGA Tour members play for, aren’t they? Here’s what you need to know.

1. Who Can Win The Loot?

Technically, everybody in the Tour Championship field can walk away $10-million-plus richer, though the odds are stacked against much of the bottom two-thirds of the field and the top five — Bryson DeChambeau, Justin Rose, Tony Finau, Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas — control their own destiny. As it does every year, PGATour.com has laid out the scenarios for how every player can prevail, which you can study here. If Patton Kizzire pulls it off, we should all just throw in the towel.

2. Tiger Returns

Tiger Woods is back in the Tour Championship field for the first time since 2013, a season in which he won five tournaments but finished second to Henrik Stenson in the overall points race after a mediocre T22 in Atlanta. For his career, the only two-time FedEx Cup champion has one victory (2007) and three runners-up (2000, ’04 and ’05) at East Lake.

3. No Canucks

The Tour Championship will lack Canadian flavour for the seventh time in nine seasons this decade. Last year, Adam Hadwin advanced to Atlanta on the back of his CareerBuilder Challenge runner-up and Valspar Championship victory. He finished 26th in the overall race. Before him, Graham DeLaet turned in a very impressive eighth-place finish to culminate his breakout year of 2013. Mike Weir qualified for the Tour Championship in the first three years of the FedEx Cup and four times previous to that, winning in a four-man playoff (Sergio Garcia, Ernie Els, David Toms) in 2001 in Houston.

4. End Of An Era

This will be the final time a points-based system is used to determine the FedEx Cup winner as the PGA Tour announced Tuesday a new to-par starting point for the top 30 players in Atlanta based on their performances in the first two playoff events. (The FedEx Cup playoffs will feature just three events beginning next year as part of the tour’s overhauled schedule.) The logic behind this change is to avoid having one player win the Tour Championship and another win the FedEx Cup. Read the tour’s release here.

5. Rookie Repeat?

DALLAS, Texas : Aaron Wise plays a shot on the fourth hole during the final round of the AT&T Byron Nelson at Trinity Forest Golf Club.

Last year, PGA Tour rookie Xander Schauffele was a surprise winner of the Tour Championship when he held off eventual FedEx Cup champion Justin Thomas with a short (but shaky) birdie conversion on the 72nd hole. Schauffele finished third in the overall points race after starting the week 26th. Having won The Greenbrier Classic after an impressive T5 in the U.S. Open, and then the Tour Championship, Schauffele was the runaway Rookie of the Year winner. This year, Schauffele’s fellow Californian Aaron Wise will look to follow his formula. Wise is 21st in the standings to start the week thanks to a T2 at the Wells Fargo Championship, a victory at the AT&T Byron Nelson and a T5 at the Northern Trust. Just two years ago, Wise was plying his trade as a newly minted pro on the Mackenzie Tour-PGA Tour Canada.